


can't hardly weight

by stevergrsno (noxlunate)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Shrunkyclunks, Social Media, gym thot bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 10:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19171411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxlunate/pseuds/stevergrsno
Summary: When Steve Rogers woke up in the future he was given a phone and shown how to use social media.Well, no, in all actuality he was given a two week crash course entitled The Future And You, a six hour sensitivity course, a brand new id, and a credit card.In which Steve gets a crush on an instagram gym thot and laments over it a lot to the intern stuck with him.





	can't hardly weight

**Author's Note:**

> HERE'S A THING. Thanks to twitter for making me finish this. Honestly it wouldn't have happened without the encouragement there!

 

When Steve Rogers woke up in the future he was given a phone and shown how to use social media.

Well, no, in all actuality he was given a two week crash course entitled The Future And You, a six hour sensitivity course, a brand new id, and a credit card.

Steve had quickly used the credit card to buy a cell phone and then proceeded to make some poor SHIELD intern who was saddled with keeping an eye on him show him exactly how to use it. The intern had shown him how to download apps, and what twitter and facebook and instagram were, and even set him up with a snapchat account.

(“Why would you _want_ the picture to disappear?” Steve had asked, frowning as he tapped at the screen on his brand new phone,

“Because… Because _reasons,_ ” Intern Elise had said as Steve took a picture of her and added it to his story. He had one friend(? Was it called a friend? Steve wasn’t sure) on the app and it was Intern Elise. She assured him that he would eventually get more.)  

Steve never got the hang of snapchat. He didn’t know enough people for facebook. And he got banned from twitter within about a week. _Instagram_ however quickly cemented itself as his favorite amongst the lot. He could follow artists on there, there were at least a hundred accounts that posted nothing but dogs, and it seemed as though half the restaurants he went to these days were created with the sole purpose of making food that looked interesting enough to take pictures of.

Most of all it enabled his new obsession with the instagram account _Buck_MeHarder._

 

Buck_MeHarder goes by Bucky and self identifies as a “Basic Bitch.”

When Steve asks Intern Elise what the hell a basic bitch even _is,_ she sort of shrugs and makes vague hand waving motions, which isn’t an answer but also Steve accepts it as one, especially considering he’s not about to get into an argument on proper answers with the only one who will go with him to Starbucks and not make a face when he orders something that tastes like it’s entirely made of milk and caramel and not in fact the coffee it claims to have.

“Who’s a basic bitch though?” Elise asks once they’ve settled into their spot on the patio, sucking noisily at her equally as ridiculous concoction of coffee and milk, all blended up with too much sugar until it makes Steve feel like his dopamine levels are directly connected to his taste buds.

God, food in the future is _so much_ better.

“No one,” Steve says, a little strained and more than a little awkward, in the vain hope that Elise won’t press the issue and he won’t have to reveal that he’s developed an uncomfortable crush on some ponytail wearing gym bro on instagram. Just today Buck_MeHarder had posted a picture of himself in a crop top that said “ _GYM BAE”_ and Steve had been too busy staring at the way his leggings cupped his thighs perfectly to cringe even a little bit at the ‘inspirational’ quote he’d captioned it with.

So. Yeah. It’s a problem.

It’s also a problem that Elise is not letting him get away with sweeping under the rug as she fixes him with a stern look and a _“Steve.”_

Which is really very unfair, all things considered, because Elise is one of a few people who says ‘ _Steve’_ like that instead of calling him ‘ _Mr Captain America, Sir,’_ or ‘ _Captain Rogers, Sir,’_ or something else along those awe filled respectful lines. It makes Steve miss Phillips and the way he’d bark ‘ _Rogers’_ like Steve was single handedly causing him to age ten years every time he had to interact with him.

“It’s just some instagram person,” Steve says and then clears his throat awkwardly before very pointedly slurping down some of his starbucks in an attempt to very clearly end this conversation.

Elise is, unfortunately for Steve, sharp as a tack and instead of bending to his will holds her hand out imperiously for Steve’s phone, “C’mon, let me see the quote-unquote basic bitch that has you all aflutter.”

Steve relents, pulling up Buck_MeHarder’s instagram and handing his phone over to Elise who starts scrolling through, looking more like she’s examining a file on a mission than perusing someone’s social media.

“Hmmm,” She says, and then “Honestly, this isn’t quite what I expected to have your little cap wings all aflutter Rogers.”  

“What? Do you think I should be going for someone more my age?” Steve asks, joking. It’s what Tony likes to joke about when Steve actually answers his phone. That he’s gonna take Steve down to the bingo hall to find a nice young 78 year old sugar baby or something something blah blah Tony Stark insane rambling _blah blah._

“Not to be like, heteronormative or whatever Cap, but honestly I was expecting someone a little more, y’know, _female_. The history books really amp up the truth, justice, and the American way part and leave out the ‘is apparently into dudes in crop tops’ bit when they teach about you.”

“Oh,” Steve says, processing that, “Well. I am. Into dudes in crop tops. Or. I mean. Men. Men in general. Yeah. That. And women. Both. Really.  Or any. I haven’t got much experience outside of men or women, but theoretically. You know. _Theoretically_. But yeah, that’s uh, that’s what I’m into.” He says, waving a hand sort of vaguely and praying to god that Elise puts an end to his rambling.

Elise has mercy on his poor soul and lifts a hand to stop him speaking, “I get it. You’re queer. You play for all teams. Please stop trying to come out to me, this is getting awkward.”

“ _Thank you,”_ Steve says and means it, and then takes the full out on the conversation when Elise turns his phone towards him with a picture of _Buck_MeHarder_ doing a yoga pose that involves one of his legs behind his head and a “So this is what got you, huh?”

 

The great thing about lusting after _Buck_MeHarder_ on instagram is that it’s just that- on _instagram_ . Steve doesn’t have to interact with the dude. The closest Steve has felt to feeling _seen_ by the guy was when he’d liked one of his photos and noticed the little, very telling _liked by stevengrogers and 1,047 others_ and needed Elise to talk him down for the 5 or so seconds until his name was replaced with another.

It’s a one way path of attraction and therefore _very safe_ because Steve will never, ever, be in the same place as some random gymspiration instagram account.

At least he thought it wouldn’t.

 

They’re at the gym when it happens. Not the gym at the tower, or even the gym at SHIELD HQ that by rights Steve and Elise could be working out at, but rather the kitchy little place in Brooklyn where Elise likes to work out because she claims working out in a gym frequented by people like Agents Romanov and Hill is not good on an interns self esteem.

Steve had attempted to say something about how Elise had nothing to worry about on that front, and Elise had snorted and said “Okay creepy grandpa,” and taken him to the gym where apparently a good half of the SHIELD interns work out during their free time.

Steve would gripe about the place, but he likes it. It’s not like what he’d grown up with, and it’s not the sleek modernity of today. It’s bright and there’s murals on the walls and, well, Steve _does_ like working out with the interns. He likes the interns in general, honestly, even if he knows half of them only got to know him because a file colloquially known as The Steve Rogers Problem was dumped on their desks a few weeks after Steve woke up when every agent and senior agent realized that integrating a dude from the 40s into the 21st century might take some _actual_ work that would be better passed off to a bunch of interns.

Steve’s pretty sure he’s adjusting better than they thought he would, honestly, but he’d still feel a little bad for the interns if they didn’t seem perfectly happy with the arrangement. And if they weren’t so terrible at hiding the fact that they pass around videos of Steve ranting about the Mets at a game or going on a 10 minute tirade after he’d googled the effects of the popularity of quinoa on the people harvesting it.

So. All that being said. When it happens Steve is listening to Elise gripe about something while Steve spots her and mentally wonders if the little Thai food place downstairs from his apartment will notice if he orders enough for twelve people and then eats it all by himself for the sixth time in a row.

When it happens, Steve is so stunned that he misses Elise’s ‘oh shit’ entirely and only manages to catch her weights by sheer muscle memory.

Because what happens is that _Buck_MeHarder_ is at Steve’s (and Elise’s. And the rest of the interns’. But mostly, in this case, _Steve’s) gym._

 

“He’s _here,”_ Steve whisper-shouts at Elise when she’s recovered and taken a chance to jab Steve in his ribs with her elbow to get his attention back.

Elise blinks once, and then again, and then finally seems to get it, “ _Ohhhhh_. Yeah. He comes here sometimes. You didn’t know that?”

“No, Elise, I _didn’t know that,”_ Steve says, and he’s pretty sure his voice is approaching a pitch it hasn’t reached since he was twelve but this is _serious,_ “I need to hide.”

“What?”

Steve grips Elise by the shoulders and looks at her very seriously, “I need. To. _Hide_.”

“Steve, you’re more than six feet of super soldier. Stealth operative you are not.”

Steve looks towards the weight machines, debating their merits as a hiding space while Elise very casually ducks out of his grip and someone with a very nice voice says “Um, are you two okay over here?”

“He’s fine, he just follows you on instagram,” Elise says like she’s just commenting on the weather or _something_ and Steve suddenly wishes for the ground beneath him to split open and swallow him whole or for Red Skull to show up so he has to go fight him or something, _anything_ to distract him from this very moment.

“Oh,” _Buck_MeHarder-_ No, this is reality, not instagram, his name is _Bucky-_ says, and then “Wait that’s-”

“Captain America, yes. But we’d really appreciate if you didn’t say that too loudly. We really like this gym,” Elise says, like some instagram gym bro cares about whether Steve can keep using his gym or not.

“Right. Of course,” Bucky says, and then, quietly, though still much to Steve’s dismay, “Wait, that means _Captain America_ is on insta? I thought it was just a fake account.”

“Yep. He’s everywhere but twitter,” Elise says.

“Wait, why not twitter?” Bucky asks and Steve has a response for this, he knows he does, but Bucky’s shirt is falling down off of one shoulder and when he glances at Steve his eyes are _much much_ bluer than they ever seem in photos and Steve’s really doing his best to not be _creepy_ here okay?

“He was _banned_ ,” Elise says with the same sort of judging tone she’s been giving Steve since it happened. It’s just enough that Steve’s brain comes back on line in his defense.

“There were _nazis,”_ Steve says, scandalized, _“Nazis!_ On twitter! I didn’t die so that there could be nazis on twitter.”

“You didn’t die at all, Cap.”

“I did. I saw the light, Elise. I heard my mother’s voice calling to me, felt the whisper of an angel’s feathers along my cheek, and the soft clouds beneath my feet.” It’s all bullshit, but it’s bullshit that makes Elise roll her eyes every single time.

“Captain America’s kind of an asshole,” Bucky says, sounding a little awed.

“Your eyes are _really_ blue,” Steve tells him.

“Wow, you really are both idiots, aren’t you?” Elise says.

 

It’s a little harder to thirst quite so blatantly once you’ve met the object of your thirst, but somehow, he and Elise still manage.

The day after their encounter in the gym _Buck_MeHarder_ posts a picture of himself doing some sort of yoga that involves him on his back on the floor with his lower half folded up over himself and his toes touching the ground. There’s a cringy caption but Steve can’t even focus on it, too busy shoving it into Elise’s face over the top of  her desk at SHIELD.

“Halasana. Huh.” Elise says, which is mostly gibberish to Steve considering what he knows of yoga is that he tried it once and felt like he suddenly had too many limbs and they were all _too big._

“Right,” Steve says, like he knows what she’s talking about.

“It’s also known as the plough pose,” Elise says with a waggle of her eyebrows.

“Who’s ploughing what?” Natasha asks, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

Steve sighs and hands his phone over to Natasha while Elise looks at her with stars in her eyes.

“Why did you never look at me like that?” Steve asks, not _really_ offended, but also, maybe, just a little bit offended.

“Because you never took down fourteen enemy combatants with only a high heel,” Elise says on a dreamy sigh.

“It was fifteen, but thank you,” Natasha says as she hands the phone back to Steve, “He’s cute. Is this why you won’t let me set you up with anyone?”

“No. I won’t let you set me up with anyone because your friends scare me.”

“Fair.”

 

Here’s the thing Steve learns rather quickly; once you run into someone, you will run into them _everywhere._

Over the next three months he sees Bucky at his favorite bagel place, gets into five different conversations with him at the gym, catches his eye while on a run, nods at him as they pass each other respectively entering and exiting a pizza place a block and a half from Steve’s apartment, and even, most memorably, see each other on the subway where Steve gets distracted looking at him and runs into a pole as he attempts to exit.

Steve doesn’t think he’ll _ever_ live that moment down, but he also doesn’t think he’ll forget the fading sound of Bucky’s laughter either.

 

The day after the subway incident _Buck_MeHarder_ posts a picture of himself in downward dog wearing Captain America yoga pants.

Which. Okay. So Steve definitely used to get a little upset about how often he was used as a design element to further the capitalist hellscape that is the 21st century, but seeing his shield stretched over the globe of one perfect ass cheek has him forgetting why he ever minded in the first place.  

“I think he’s tormenting me,” Steve says, dramatically flopping down onto the mat beside where Natasha is helping Elise do some sort of stretching thing that involves Natasha using her body to push Elise’s leg towards her chest.

“The yoga pants?” Elise asks.

“ _The yoga pants,”_ Steve says with all the pain of the truly suffering, because he _is,_ he is _truly suffering_ here.

“Have you thought of, I don’t know, maybe asking him out?” Natasha asks, and Steve ignores the judgement in her voice.

“I can’t.”

“Riiiiight,” Natasha says and exchanges a look with Elise that seems to very clearly communicate a _‘this fucking idiot’_ sort of meaning. Then, she gets up and tosses a roll of tape at Steve’s head, “Well, if you’re going to be here whining you might as well help me teach your intern how to fight properly.”

“I know how to fight,” Elise insist.

“Uh-huh,” Natasha says, and then “You fight about as well as my grandma.”

 

Steve doesn’t ask Bucky out. Steve doesn’t get a chance to, because Bucky approaches him the moment Steve steps into the gym on a Thursday evening and says “You should take me out.”

Steve blinks, makes a face that he’s sure makes him look like an idiot, and finally manages a “Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I _should.”_

“Oh good. I wouldn’t- Y’know- I wouldn’t normally do this-”

“Why? Because I’m a fan?” Steve asks because yeah, that’s gotta be awkward. Steve can totally see how that would be awkward. Oh god, he hopes Bucky doesn’t feel obligated to go out with him or something because of a few conversations in the gym and what probably seems like stalker tendencies.

“No, because you’re _Captain America,_ you dingus,” Bucky says before Steve can manage to formulate a proper apology for seeming like a stalker, “Going on a date with an actual bonafide superhero is the kind of thing you grow out of thinking will happen when you grow out of playing MASH at school.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, _oh_ ,” Bucky says, the sort of smile curving his mouth that makes Steve want to just _keep_ looking at him.

“You don’t think I’m, I don’t know, weird and stalkery?” Because okay, Steve hasn’t _meant_ to be stalkery, but they have run into each other accidentally a lot, and Steve _does_ like damn near every picture the guy posts on instagram, and sure, he _does_ make eyes at Bucky from across the gym like Elise insists he does, and _yes,_ all of those things put together might possibly seem stalkery. Steve _gets that._ Even if stalking is absolutely not his intention here.

“Nah, you’re not a stalker. You’re _definitely_ a giant weirdo though,” Bucky says and there’s no real sting to it, just Bucky with his very blue eyes and his very nice, very teasing smile, wanting to apparently go out on a date with Steve.

 

“I have a date,” Steve tells Elise the next day over pastries from some place a few blocks from Steve’s apartment that Elise _swore_ he _needed_ to make the trek to try. The chocolate babka is bigger than Steve’s head, so he can’t exactly complain.

“With Bucky?” Elise asks, absently scrolling through something on her phone. She’s already finished her own own pastry, and claims that unlike Steve she can’t pack in enough food for a family of six and not be rolled home after.

“No, with the guy we get our coffee from. _Yes,_ with Bucky. Who else?”

Elise seems unbothered by Steve’s sarcasm, responding with a roll of her eyes and a pointed slurp of her drink. “I don’t know. Just two days you were lamenting how he was too beautiful to be attainable, his cheekbones are a renaissance sculpture brought to life, his eyes pools as deep and blue as the sea, yada yada. It was all very dramatic and gave me high school theater kid flashbacks to be honest.”

“I said none of that,” Steve insists, not sure just how offended he should be by the theater kid jab. He’s assuming at least _a little,_ but also he’s going to have to google to find out the modern connotations there.

“I was paraphrasing,” Elise says with a shrug, “Anyways, that’s great Cap. On a scale of one to ten though, how much are you freaking out?”

“I’m a solid seventeen.”

“That’s what I thought.”

 

They go on a date. Steve doesn’t manage to do anything extremely embarrassing and Bucky’s the one who drags his elbow through his food and gets _adorably_ flustered, so considering it’s Steve’s _first_ date since the fucking _forties_ he’d say it goes pretty well.

“You wanna come up?” Steve asks when the date has technically been over for awhile and Bucky and him have slowly weaved their way through the city and back to Steve’s place.

“On the first date? Didn’t think you were that kind of girl Rogers,” Bucky teases, leaning just a little into Steve’s space where Steve’s leaned up against the brick wall outside his apartment building.

“That just shows how much you’ve got to learn,” Steve says, and then, feeling almost _too_ earnest with it, “Though mostly I’m just not ready for tonight to be over.”

All of the teasing seems to fade, leaving Bucky looking almost soft as he slides a hand into Steve’s. “Alright then. I’d love to come upstairs.”

 

At work the next day Elise shoves her phone into Steve’s face with a very demanding _“Explain.”_

On the screen is Bucky’s instagram and a post from what must have been this morning, a picture of Bucky laying back, his hair spilling across a pillow, and a grumpy curve to his lips. At the very edge of the frame is a sliver of a blonde head.

“Oh yeah. He said he’d be posting something,” Steve says, glancing at the caption: _“That moment when what’s in bed seems way better than the gym”_ followed by a string of crying  and flexing arm emojis. “It looks nice.”

“It looks _nice. It looks nice?”_ Elise’s voice has taken a very near hysterical tone as she snatches the phone back, “You get with instagram hottie and he posts about it on instagram and all you have to say is _it looks nice._ I should- I should-” She puffs out a breath and seems to deflate all at once, “I should congratulate you, but also I need him to sign a whole stack of NDAs that he should have signed like _yesterday.”_

“What’s he gonna do, tell the tabloids how I was in bed? I think it’s fine.”

“You would,” Elise says with a sigh, “Now, tell me all about your date. Just _how_ dreamy was Mr. Dreamy?”

“Why are we friends again?”

“Well, it all started when all the _real_ agents decided they couldn’t deal with you and pawned you off on us lowly interns…”

 

💪💪💪

 

One day in September a picture goes up on the instagram account _Buck_MeHarder._ The picture is clearly taken in a gym, and features Bucky Barnes on a weight bench. Bent over him is one Steve Rogers, Bucky’s hand curled around his neck as Steve leans down to kiss him.

It has millions of likes and comments, which means that Elise’s friends have probably seen it on at least one of the buzzfeed articles that have popped up about it. She still sends it to each and every one of them who have suffered through months of Elise complaining about her dumb coworker’s crush.

**Author's Note:**

> pst go check out [this thing](https://twitter.com/thatsmysecret5/status/1136621379418251265?s=20) made for this on twitter because it's GREAT. also come follow me @attackofthezee if you wanna scream with me about things!


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